Movie review

The Boxtrolls

“The Boxtrolls” are adorable grumbly gremlins who collect garbage, live underground in cardboard clothing and are widely feared by everyone on the surface. They’re the twee Victorian forebears of C.H.U.D.

Engaging as it is to look at, this stop-motion animation film from the young Oregon studio Laika seems to have been masterminded by people thinking, “Everyone loves Pixar. So let’s do everything the opposite!” Admirably contrarian. Like being cast overboard and calling out for an anvil.

The little monsters live in an underground town built out of scavenged rubbish, and the animators have realized this junky paradise with loving detail and a playful sense of wonder. Among the boxtrolls lives a happy human boy, whom the others call Eggs after the word printed on his box, but rumors that they kidnap children have touched off panic in the gloomy Dickensian city, Cheesebridge, aboveground.

The Red Hats, a greasy group of Cockneys led by the villainous Snatcher (voiced by Ben Kingsley), have been promised that if they eliminate the boxtrolls, they’ll be welcomed into the clubby aristocracy of the cheese-loving White Hats and their dandyish leader, Lord Portley-Rind (Jared Harris).

As I said: Pixar this is not. There are no pop-culture references and no jokes to speak of, just alliteration and puns, nor are the characters lovable or even especially interesting. A source of inspiration seems to be the work of the Aardman stop-motion animation studio behind the Wallace and Gromit films, but W&G are much funnier and more charming than anyone here.

I do admire this film’s commitment to full-on Britishness. There are so many scenes of gourmet cheese tasting, class snobbery and mass public nudity that it could just as easily have been titled, “A Random Sunday at the University of Cambridge.”

Too bad the story is such weak tea: Eggs makes friends with Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter Winnie (Elle Fanning), who works on de-trollifying him in mildly comedic scenes like the one in which he learns that shaking hands doesn’t mean throwing your palms in the air and wiggling them frantically. At the same time, the evil Snatcher attends a party dressed in drag (see what I mean about Cambridge?) and Snatcher’s Red Hat henchmen lurk in the background being neither scary nor funny but simply a bit daft.

A lot of kids will be put off by both the creepy faces of many of the characters and the creeping pace of the plot, which hums along like a British drizzle until the final act. A couple of mild secrets are revealed to no great effect, the henchmen stop being evil simply because they’re asked, and the villain fumbles around in a giant Jules Verne-meets-steampunk contraption that probably seemed hilarious in the animation room but on-screen just seems a bit pathetic. You want to give Snatcher directions to the nearest Jiffy Lube and spot him the money for an oil change.

Oh, and everything culminates in yet another cheese-tasting scene. The characters may obsess over Gorgonzola and Roquefort, but dramatically the film has all the impact of Kraft.